


Cryptids

by SilverDagger



Category: Claymore
Genre: F/F, Ficlet, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 01:29:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4285491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDagger/pseuds/SilverDagger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, once in a very great while, you meet someone who is exactly who they seem to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cryptids

_We can look like anything we want to_ , she'd told Raki in Rabona, walking down the main thoroughfare past pedestrians and squabbling merchants, invisible to their eyes. What she hadn't told him is _we can be only what we are_.

Rabona seems distant now, a vision of cobbled streets and sunlight on tiled roofs, like a dream from which she's already woken. She's in the wilderness now. Dark branches stretch above her, and it's a warrior who travels with her, no need for disguises between them.

Jean. Her name is Jean, and after five days on the road, Clare still knows so little of her. Only that she's diligent, and self-contained, and that she has nightmares sometimes that she'll never acknowledge on waking. 

Raki had been an easy companion, his goals and his fears like a book left open for her to read, written in a language that had once been her own. His absence, like any pain, is best ignored until it can be remedied, and she counts it down as one more failure to protect what matters. Jean is a different sort of creature, one she recognizes but doesn't understand. But despite all of that, despite a lifetime of knowing better, it's surprisingly easy to let herself trust.

Jean does things silently, with great care and precision. Clare watches her, the way her hands move as she works - slicing vegetables, boiling water for tea over a low fire - and understands a bit better what Teresa had meant, when she said she wanted her to stay human.

These are human things, after all, turnips and tea and potatoes, a comrade to share the fire with. She's never had much need for them, but seen from a different angle, the same quality that renders them irrelevant to survival makes them precious.

After a moment, Jean pauses in her work, frowning down at the glint of the blade in the firelight. She seems to have noticed Clare's eyes on her, or maybe, after five days of careful distance, she's simply grown tired of saying nothing. 

"When I was - " Jean gestures vaguely, dancing around words no warrior is easy with speaking. "You weren't afraid of me."

Clare remembers it well enough - the cave, the chains, the creature held there by little more than willpower in the end. Before she can stop herself, she thinks of razor-edged claws holding her down beneath the water, the taste of river mud and panic thick in her throat, and feels her heartrate accelerate before she tamps it down.

"No," she says. "Not of you."

"Why not?"

It's a good question. Clare isn't even sure she knows the answer, except - it's not often that you can look right at someone and see them for exactly who they are. She knows what it's like to see a man with kind eyes and a civilized smile, and recognize the monster's face beneath the human skin. The opposite is rarer.

Clare leans forward, takes the knife from her unresisting hand and sets it aside, noting the way her eyes widen and color rises in her cheeks as one more truth revealed. And trust is a risk, and too often a mistake, but if anyone has earned it - Clare meets her eyes, unflinching, and tells the only truth that matters.

"Because I could see your face."


End file.
